Description

Overview:

When she published Oroonoko in 1688, Aphra Behn created one of the foundational myths of her period and of the century that followed. The story of the noble African prince tricked into slavery resonated powerfully with people in the English-speaking world for generations. This was even the case for those who never read Behn’s book. Behn’s work was adapted into a play entitled Oroonoko: A Tragedy by Thomas Southerne in 1695, and that version of the story–one that differs in key ways from Behn’s original–was one of the mainstays of the theater in Britain into the nineteenth century. Oroonoko was, like Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe or Jonathan Swift’s Lemuel Gulliver, a character who was introduced in a work of fiction in the decades around 1700 who would go on to have a long life outside the pages of the work in which he originally appeared.

Subject:

English Language Arts

Level:

Community College / Lower Division, College / Upper Division

Material Type:

Reading

Author:

Aphra Behn

Provider:

The Open Anthology of Literature in English

Date Added:

07/10/2017